Correia fisks 'no straight, cis, white' male author reading challenge

K. Tempest Bradford is one of those writers who seems to be less focused on writing good fiction than she is on ethnic or gender identity . In fact her “rage” at reading things that offended her led her to the novel idea of eliminating writers of offending demographics from her reading list and she’s challenging you to do the same. Never mind reading stuff you find interesting or enjoyable, there is social justice to consider.

Because every time I tried to get through a magazine, I would come across stories that I didn’t enjoy or that I actively hated or that offended me so much I rage-quit the issue. Go through enough of that, and you start to resist the idea of reading at all.

Then I thought: What if I only read stories by a certain type of author? Instead of reading everything, I would only look at stories by women or people of color or LGBT writers. Essentially: no straight, cis, white males.

Cutting that one demographic out of my reading list greatly improved my enjoyment of reading short stories. That’s not to say I didn’t come across bad stories or offensive stuff in stories or other things that turned me off. I did. But I came across this stuff far less than I did previously.

Neil Gaiman who Bradford used as a prop in her photo was cool with her idea for some reason.

Correia fisks the entire blog post but this bit is especially enlightening.

Do you want to know the best way to get more people from diverse groups to be writers? Get them to be readers. Readers become writers. Populations with more readers will produce more writers. Some of us are compulsive story tellers, and get them immersed in the medium, and they’ll want to tell stories of their own in that medium.

How do you get people to become readers? Introduce them to books you think they will enjoy. The sexual/racial identity of the author is irrelevant to enjoyment (unless you’re a flaming bigot, because it will make you RAGEQUIT). People tend to keep doing stuff they enjoy.

How do you know what books people will enjoy? That’s the trick. Everybody is different. Everyone has differing tastes. That’s why you introduce them to a wide variety of books. I’m talking real diversity, not the skin-deep superficial diversity SJWs glom onto, but real diversity of thoughts, ideas, and imagination.

SJWs love diversity as long as everybody is diverse in an approved manner. My side welcomes everybody and thrives on competition, whether it is art or ideas, the more the better. I want more people from every possible group writing books. Because the more books that are created, the better the odds that there will be something truly brilliant.

That sounds pretty, you know, American.

@monsterhunter45 Why did I have to be a white, straight, cis male author in this client; so stupid. Too late to identify as a woman?